Xochitl Alvarez, an assistant principal expecting the couple’s second child, said her husband has been serving others since he was a teenager through community and church activities.

“He’s doing this because he really cares about San Diego, to see people really have a better opportunity,” she said. “It’s just how we are, how we grew up, helping other people.”

Specifically, Alvarez is advocating reinvesting in neighborhoods, addressing the city’s infrastructure backlog, increasing pay for police officers and asking residents about what they want done.

Not everyone thinks Alvarez has the community’s best interests at heart. The councilman recently struck a last-minute compromise on the Barrio Logan community plan to create a buffer between residences and shipyards. While many in the community support the plan, it continues to have opponents on both sides of the neighborhood-industry dispute.

“There’s a major trust factor with David,” said community activist Rachel Ortiz. “People who have worked not just these five years (on the plan) but as far back as 40 years, who renovated Barrio Logan, are insulted. It’s a slap in the face. That land was supposed to be ours, a testament to our progress over the decades. It was for his political gain, period. It’s obvious.”

Alvarez responded, “Leadership is not pandering to one specific group. My role as a leader is to make decisions based on the best interest of the majority.”

Spread the success

As youngsters, Alvarez and his brothers often rode their bicycles along Imperial Avenue and Harbor Drive, zipping by warehouses and industrial buildings and into the deserted roads of downtown’s East Village.

Through the years he saw those crumbling relics get rebuilt and modernized. Public investment created the Gaslamp Quarter to rejuvenate downtown, and one of the buildings he used to ride by — the Western Metal Supply Co. — became the left-field facade at Petco Park.

When it comes to revitalization, Alvarez calls downtown “the best job, if not the only success story.” But that success is a constant reminder of what he views as a broader failure: how other neighborhoods continue to struggle. Alvarez has made it his mission to shift the attention — and cash flow — to places and programs that have been overlooked for decades.

Those aren’t just empty words to Alvarez, as he witnessed up close the city’s unequal attention on communities. So here’s his pitch: Who better to focus on shifting City Hall’s focus toward neighborhoods than the boy on that bus who grew up — and still lives — on those streets?